Transcript of "Wikis at work"

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Wikis at work A short introduction to 'wikis' and wikis for biology Dan Bolser and Paolo Romano URL for slides: http://

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Overview of today's course <ul><li>Session 1 (35 min) : </li></ul><ul><ul><li>What is a wiki? – A gentle introduction to the wiki concept, and a look at Wikipedia. </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Session 2 (35 min)‏ </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Biological wikis! – A review of some of the most important wikis for biology (BioWikis). </li></ul></ul><ul><li>BREAK (15 min)‏ </li></ul>

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<ul><li>There is no longer one single 'point of control' for managing web content. </li></ul><ul><li>Content is managed by a decentralized community of participating users. </li></ul>Wiki is radically different!

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Other advantages of wiki <ul><li>There are many other advantages over 'traditional' web publishing... </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Notification of changes </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>History of changes </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Discussion of changes </li></ul></ul>

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Condensed history <ul><li>1994: Cunningham coined the term 'wiki'. </li></ul><ul><ul><li>A site (for software developers) with pages that can be edited via the browser, each with a page history. </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Over the next five years it spawned alternative wiki applications and websites (wiki culture). </li></ul><ul><ul><li>By 2000, it had developed lots of of spin-off content, most notably MeatballWiki (for general discussion). </li></ul></ul><ul><li>2001, Wikipedia launched. </li></ul><ul><li>2007, Wikipedia in the worlds top 10 web sites. </li></ul>

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Wikipedia <ul><li>Size </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Stats. </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Growth‏ </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Research. </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Rules </li></ul><ul><ul><li>e.g. Deleting content. </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Culture </li></ul><ul><ul><li>e.g. Anatomy of a talk page. </li></ul></ul>Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site, and it has about 90,000 regularly active contributors.

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Wikipedia <ul><li>Size </li></ul><ul><ul><li>19.7 million articles </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><ul><li>3.7 million in English </li></ul></ul></ul><ul><ul><ul><li>847,069 in Italian (4 th out of 282)‏ </li></ul></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>2.7 billion monthly hits from the US alone. </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>7 th most popular site in the world. </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>The largest and most popular general reference work. </li></ul></ul>

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Wikipedia <ul><li>Growth (Kittur)‏ </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Wikipedia has been growing exponentially since 2002 (Voss)‏ </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>“ wisdom of crowds” or “elite users” </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><ul><li>a large number of people with a small number of edits, or </li></ul></ul></ul><ul><ul><ul><li>a core group who do most of the work? </li></ul></ul></ul>

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BioMoore's Law <ul><li>Over time: </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Cost per unit of information can be decreased by orders of magnitude. </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Throughput is increased by orders of magnitude. </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><ul><li>Fan et al. 2006 . Nat Rev Genet . </li></ul></ul></ul><ul><li>Comprehensive disease studies that might require ~1bn genotypes would now cost only a few million dollars. </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Revolution in human genetics. </li></ul></ul>

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BioMoore's Law <ul><li>Over time: </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Cost per unit of information can be decreased by orders of magnitude. </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Throughput is increased by orders of magnitude. </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><ul><li>Fan et al. 2006 . Nat Rev Genet . </li></ul></ul></ul><ul><li>Comprehensive disease studies that might require ~1bn genotypes would now cost only a few million dollars. </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Revolution in human genetics. </li></ul></ul>

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Community annotation is essential <ul><li>Centralised databases can't cope with annotating the influx of data. </li></ul><ul><li>Less investment in more specialised data. </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Fewer people with a stake. </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Specialists more disparate. </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><ul><li>Communities are smaller and more focused. </li></ul></ul></ul><ul><li>Do wikis hold the answer? </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Wikipedia as a model… </li></ul></ul>

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BioWikis <ul><li>There is a variety of different systems. </li></ul><ul><li>All seek to 'recognize' contributors (biologists) in a way more familiar to scientists than Wikipedia. </li></ul><ul><li>Most have features not found in Wikipedia. </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Some projects use the base of Wikipedia to successfully build integrated 'sub-projects'... </li></ul></ul>